secretly_yes

Thank you all for your great advice. I ended up giving the paper to a peer in another field to read and to a former classmate. Both had liked the paper and suggested minor edits. I read it over 3 more times, made some changes and submitted. Hopefully it goes well if not, I learned a lot about both about the topic/my research area and about paper-writing in general.

I am turning in my first research paper for a class on Monday. Though I worked very hard on it, it is my first research paper and I am worried that I could fail. Can PhD students get an F on a paper?

I don't know a lot about this, but I agree with Wannabe. Not only does DC have the location advantage, but GWU is also part of a consortium of DC schools, so that if Georgetown for example has a great class that you want to take, you can do that while you're a student at Gtown. I would also add that while DC schools do have a lot of adjunct faculty (especially teaching MA classes), full-time people do have time for students and generally don't also work for government or anything like that.

Hotels in downtown DC are always crazy expensive. Try broadening your search to include places in MD/VA that have easy access to the metro, like Silver Spring, MD and Arlington, VA. Both SAIS and Georgetown are close to Dupont Circle, but those hotels are pricey. There's also the Tabard Inn in Dupont Circle. It's a B&B -type place about a block from Dupont. When a friend came to visit he stayed there for like $100/night with breakfast included. Good deal.

I don't even understand how these came to be the possible options. The funded English PhD seems like a badly paid job you don't really like. If you really want to do public policy, go for it and figure out the funding (or transfer out) later. Otherwise, apply to a job that pays more than 17K a year. Even if you don't come out with a degree at the end of six years, you'll have work experience and no additional debt and that's valuable too.

I am unbelievably happy to be done with the admissions process (especially the waiting) and I am super excited to start at a great Department in the Fall, but it still makes me a little sad to see that the Fall 2011 people are slowly being replaced by people that are just starting in their own admissions cycle. I am sure there's something wrong with me. Any way, it has been a pleasure. Good luck to all of you.

Also realistically, if you are going to live on a grad student budget in DC the chances that you'll end up living in Dupont/Foggy Bottom are slim because these are very expensive areas. Arlington is nice, especially if you stay in the Rosslyn-Ballston area or in Old Town Alexandria. Both are a pretty easy commute to Gtown (combination metro and free shuttle.)

I am not going, but I live in DC. I suggest you try hotwire.com and select the "Embassy Row" area. Generally any hotel that they include in that area is an easy commute to Georgetown. If you want specific hotels, Gtown has a shuttle from the Holiday Inn-Key Bridge as well as from the Holiday Inn on Wisconsin Ave. Hotel Palomar, the Marriott Residence Inn and the rest of the Dupont Circle hotels are close to Georgetown's Dupont Circle shuttle. Good luck!

If finding a job after graduation is your main concern, I vote for GWU. They are both excellent schools and really good at placing people in good jobs. Go to the school that will make you have less loans when you graduate. Unless you really want to work in Europe, then go to SAIS. They have good Europe contacts, from what I understand.

Hi, I did my MA at Gtown and I didn't apply there for PhD. I only applied to GWU and I will be going there. I don't think one school's reputation is better that the other one. I think they are both great schools with really amazing faculty. I made my decision to apply to GWU in part based on the rankings, in part because of the interests of the faculty they have there. Gtown has better Middle East people, for example, but GWU has way better Asian people. I would tie them for Latin America (with a policy edge for Gtown because of Valenzuela) and maybe tie them for European (but put SAIS above both for European.) What do you want to study?

I vote for American University. I don't think DC is inordinately expensive compared to Philadelphia and I think it has many more opportunities to offer. DC has great internship and job opportunities and attracts great faculty, speakers and conferences. But, I graduated from a DC school, so I am biased.

Hi, I am not too familiar with either of these schools, but I know about Latin American studies. I graduated from the MA program at Georgetown, along with a bunch of journalists. Even though Gtown has a pretty amazing career center and excellent internship placements, in the end what got me my internships and my job was the name of the school, the people I met while I was a student (everyone likes to meet students, it turns out) and the city where the school is located. Applying this to your problem, I would go to NYU. I think NYC is likely to offer you better opportunities than Chicago can and I think a 2-year program will give you more flexibility to intern while you go to school. Lastly don't worry too much about funding. I was accepted with zero funding and by the second year had full tuition remission plus a stipend and an internship. Best decision I ever made in my life. Buena suerte!

I haven't received mine either. I am going to start worrying intensely right now.

If you have three really good recommenders, use those for everything. I tried to use different recommenders, and I don't think that worked well. For one school I used a former supervisor at a research project that was an alumna of the school. I am pretty sure that the letter she wrote for me was not half as strong as a letter another professor wrote. For another school I had a professor who had also served on the state's board of education for two terms. That also didn't work. Out of the seven people that wrote letters for me there was only one combination that yielded acceptances (ie, I was admitted into both programs where both of those professors submitted letters.) I think it's more about how much your recommenders believe in you and want you to succeed and less about how famous or well connected they are.